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Galerie Laroche/Joncas is very pleased to present the exhibition ‘Back Home’ by Jana Sterbak from May 5 to June 9 2012.

“From the early 1980′s on, Sterbak has carved herself an enviable place on the international scene. Her impressive CV is proof of a career that has not slowed down from the start: her production has always been sought after and here presence in the art world constantly reaffirmed by her exhibition, lectures and appearances.

Apart from the major retrospective organized by the Carré d’art in Nimes in 2005-6, several retrospectives have taken place, including at the National Gallery of Canada (1991), The Fondation Tapies in Barcelona (1995), the Serpentine Gallery in London (1996), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (1998), the Haus der Kunst in Munich (2002) and the Malmo Konsthall in Sweden (2002). Her work has been in several group exhibitions in Canada, the US and Europe, which have also been occasions to establish fruitful dialogues with the productions of artists from different cultural horizons. In 1990 she participated in the Aperto exhibition at the Venice Biennale and in 2003 she represented Canada at the same prestigious event. Most of these appearances have been accompanied by a substantial catalogue. Her work is included in the principal Quebec and Canadian collections as well as in European and American collections. She has won several important awards, including the Ozias-Leduc from the Fondation Émile-Nelligan in 1996 and the Chalmers in 2000.

If one were to sum up the production of Jana Sterbak, one could say that behind each object, each image, there is a human, often feminine body. Whether in her performances, installations, sculptures, drawings or videos, the artist develops an incisive reflection on the human condition. Effort, physical constraint and the difficulty of entering into contact with the other are among the major paradigms of her artistic process. Her mediation on impermanency, constantly renewed both on the formal and technical level, allow us to gauge the scope and complexity of a work that shows impressive skill in handling the tension of extremes, as suggested in the phrase that accompanies the installation Golem: Objects as Sensation (1979-1982): “I withdraw, moving from the periphery of my body toward the interior. I condense my vital organs: soon they will be nothing more than a slender thread placed in the centre.”1.